A COVID-19 resurgence in the deadliest coronavirus pandemic city in America has New York City "on the edge of a precipice," according to Obama administration CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.
Frieden tweeted Saturday:
"NYC is on the edge of a precipice. We're seeing extensive, ongoing spread in religious communities and there's a high risk of Covid resurgence, even in areas that were hit hard in the spring."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been taking bows for the state's coronavirus response, despite it having more than double the COVID-19 related deaths (33,290) than any other state in the U.S. Only adjacent New Jersey has more deaths per 100 million than New York.
"My message to New Yorkers is please stay vigilant and my message to local governments is do the enforcement," Cuomo wrote in a statement. "We can beat this thing if we work together and stay New York tough."
New York's recent surge of cases rose to the highest number in more than four months and before the state began to reopen in early June. The 1,731 new cases marked a 0.4% increase compared with an average 0.2% daily increase in the previous seven days. Six more people died, Gov. Cuomo said in a tweet.
The increase is largely the result of local outbreaks: New York has its eye on 20 ZIP codes out of more than 1,300. The city has been concerned about a dozen ZIP codes in Brooklyn and Queens where the positive-test rate is far above the state average, which was reported for Friday as 1.3% or 1% on a seven-day average.
State officials also attribute the rise partly to expanded testing, which hit a record of more than 130,000.
Information from Bloomberg was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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